New Season of 'The Walking Dead' Reveals Characters' Softer Side

Fourth season of top-rated show mixes subtle character development with gory spectacle

After three years and hundreds of scenes of zombie splatter, "The Walking Dead" is beefing up its soft side for a more intensely character-focused season. John Jurgensen has a preview on Lunch Break. Photo: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC.

In Sunday's season premiere of the top-rated cable series on television, former sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes strolls into a field, hoe in hand, to tend some vegetables and look in on his pigs. It is a quiet, pastoral scene disrupted only by the growling of the reanimated corpses gathered outside the fence line.

After three years and hundreds of scenes of zombie splatter, "The Walking Dead" is fleshing out its tender side. The band of refugees of a civilization-ending plague have spent the previous seasons in a constant flight or fight for survival against threats by undead hordes and fellow humans. Now living inside the barricades of a former prison, survivors are trying to rebuild their lives—from raising crops to raising children.

As zombies have evolved throughout the AMC's "Walking Dead," so too has the make up design. Executive producer and special effects designer Greg Nicotero discusses the small details, such as black mouths, all zombies should have.

Robert Kirkman, an executive producer of "The Walking Dead" and the author of the comic books it was adapted from, says, "There's a lot more emotion being drilled into these stories now. Some of this stuff may have gotten glossed over in previous seasons" as producers focused on establishing the chaotic world within the show.

However, given that flesh-chewing "walkers" routinely diminish this show's cast, new dangers loom, including a deadly threat from within the prison's sanctuary. Mr. Kirkman adds, "This is a more intensely character-focused season. That said, it isn't necessarily going to be a quieter season."

When AMC's hit "Walking Dead" returns, producers are promising more zombie decomposition. Executive producer and special effects designer Greg Nicotero discusses how this season's zombies could be the ickiest yet.

As fans of the series have long evangelized to the uninitiated, "The Walking Dead" isn't really about zombies. Yes, they are the leering, partially decomposed face of the show. But more importantly, their relentless presence reveals how people behave in the absence of social and moral structures. The show's mix of gory spectacle and more subtle storytelling is illustrated in Sunday's episode, which juxtaposes the group's supply run to a dark, zombie-infested building with Rick's attempts to keep his young son Carl focused on the quotidian details of life behind the barricades.

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Norman Reedus as Daryl and Melissa McBride as Carol
AMC

This double-barreled approach helps explain the ratings success of the AMC series. Last season "The Walking Dead" was second only to NFL football in its ratings among viewers 18-to-49 years old, the most important demographic for networks and advertisers. (In total viewers, "The Walking Dead" ranked below broadcast hits such as "NCIS.") The median age of "Walking Dead" viewers is 33, compared with 55 for broadcast series. If the blood-and-guts quotient doesn't exactly qualify the series as "family" programming, the wide age range of its audience does.

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Steven Yeun as Glenn and Lauren Cohan as Maggie
AMC

All this allows "The Walking Dead" to have it both ways in marketing the show. The new season is being promoted with typical stunts, such as the unveiling of a fan-designed zombie-killing vehicle. The car, courtesy of Hyundai, bristles with blades and a gun turret, and appeared at a convention for fantasy fans in New York. At the same time, AMC is going a bit higher-brow by working with the University of California Irvine, to offer an online course in which professors of public health, mathematics and sociology will expound on the deeper themes in "The Walking Dead." Starting Monday, the eight-week class is part of a growing category known as MOOCs (massive open online courses); it is free and not for credit.

Joanne Christopherson, a UC Irvine professor of social sciences, watched all three seasons in a week to prepare for her part in the course. She says she found links to Thomas Hobbes's famous "state of nature" theory ("nasty, brutish and short") and psychologist Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" in which the "Walking Dead" characters would be struggling near the bottom tier.

Joel Stillerman, head of original programming and production at AMC, says he decided "The Walking Dead" was right for the network when he read Mr. Kirkman's preface to the first comic book, which described his ambitions for the series: "I want to explore how people deal with extreme situations and how these events CHANGE them...I hope you guys are looking forward to a sprawling epic."

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Larry Gilliard Jr. as Bob
AMC

In contrast with the "methodically chaptered" pace of the previous seasons, the new season attempts a more "novelistic" approach, in which characters do things that don't necessarily register or pay off for the audience until episodes later, Mr. Stillerman says. "This year, and probably for the duration of the series, the more important thing will be about surviving the human aspects of the zombie apocalypse."

AMC's most decorated shows, "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men," have both taken home the Emmy award for outstanding drama (four years in a row for the latter series). But the only Emmy that AMC's most popular series has won (twice) is for its prosthetic effects. The recipient, "Walking Dead" makeup and special effects designer Greg Nicotero, directed Sunday's episode.

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Scott Wilson as Hershel.
AMC

Nobody is claiming that nuanced character studies are more important to the show's success than its parade of shambling zombies. Mr. Stillerman says AMC is careful to "superserve" the segment of the audience that tunes in for them with at least a few gory gotchas per episode. Still, after multiple seasons, even combat with the undead can become predictable.

Without revealing details, Mr. Kirkman described one challenge the "Walking Dead" writers set for themselves this season, after so many past scenes featuring zombies attacking en masse: constructing a scenario in which a lone walker can be just as dangerous.

The producer says, "I like the fact that a lot of our characters—and a lot of our viewers—are starting to view the walkers as a manageable threat. You want to lull people into a false sense of security."

Season 1- 2 were incredible- the story and character development, especially with rick and shane being the tragic hero... i see where people are coming from when they draw a parallel to a soap opera in season 3 though..

Character driven v. splatter driven are two very different kind of shows. I wish them well, but I'm not hopeful.

I found "Falling Skies" and "Revolution" unwatchable as they drug-out every character-driven interaction and continually cut-back on the much more expensive visual effects.

It certainly can be done. The Sopranos and Breaking Bad were character driven, but you better have some good writers and you need new issues to explore.

How about this new issue to explore...... just how long can a living-dead rotting corpse actually move around? Seems like they would have a short 'life span' to me, and the great masses of undead wandering Atlanta should be turning to dust by year three.

They have done the Nomad theme, looking for each other and for a promised land.

They have done the utopia theme, living on Herschel's farm but ignoring their reality.

They have done the armed encampent theme, living in the prison with Walkers and Woodbury as threats.

The question is do the producers develop a "New Normal" and accept that? Or do they keep it constantly threatened? Either way, it can get boring without new situations which challenge the characters to evaluate their own humanity. Do you feed those who don't contribute? Do you allow in outsiders?

I find it interesting how much the fan base wanted Lori and Andrea to die...not usual for a series to have despised lead characters the fans are sick of watching.

There are interesting leadership lessons in this show and many parallels to our current economic and political situation in the U.S. and the world.

It's an entertaining show, but I've been consistently amused/frustrated by the vehicles they use. I understand Hyundai must be a big underwriter, but it stretches any form of credibility (strange using that word considering the topic) that survivalists would choose a Tuscon over an F-150 Raptor. Really?

"... just how long can a living-dead rotting corpse actually move around? Seems like they would have a short 'life span' to me, and the great masses of undead wandering Atlanta should be turning to dust by year three."

This is another one of those themes (zombies) that, when allowed to drag on without credible explaination, requires the suspension of disbelief. Even good fiction is rooted in something. Sometimes bad entertainment gets that way by becoming untethered to any cognitive roots.

Back in Season 1....pulling up to the CDC (with few zombies around) There were multiple military hummers, with mounted weapons around the facility. Add to that all the weapons clearly laying around the fighting potions. And yet they drive off in the RV.....and it wasn't even their first opportunity. I kept asking "THESE are the people that survived!?"

And yet, I've watched three season so far and will continue to do so.

Very interested to see if they learned ANY lessons from the guy in the episode "CLEAR"....i.e. zombie proof the entrance routes, with easily avoided traps by any thinking human.

Come on William, you must have thought through the possible scenario's getting ready for the real zombie apocalypse that is sure to come, haven't you? Think how hard fuel will be to get so you have to take gas milage over "fun" factor. But I'm with you, I would had surely stopped by Ferrari of Atlanta when I was in town to see what they had in stock. Have to admit, when in my mind I walk through the coming apocalypse (of course it's Bush's fault) I really never imagined myself driving a Hyundai or Subaru but I'm in the SL63 or Ferrari California hiding out in the ocean front home.

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